Which is harder
'Bananavision capture card ?'
type N
or
'How do I search the web for a foo1500 scsi controller. Has anyone tested
this driver with 2.2.11.....
Which is harder?
User buys Banavision capture card. Oops! Not supported in 2.2. User
has to wait for the 2.4 kernel to come out (months and months
away).... or use a development kernel. Whoops! 2.3 kernel has
incompatible changes requiring user to update user mode programs....
Or... Banavision capture card comes with diskette or CD-ROM containing
an RPM file which the user simply has to install using RPM -i. As part
of the RPM install, the post-install script automatically recompiles the
driver to match the kernel the user has installed, and it just works.
User can also download from Banavision.com's web page the latest RPM
that works with 2.2.11.....
The reason why Windows is easier in these sorts of situations is that
it is up to the hardware vendors to supply the device driver. Linux is
becoming popular enough that some vendors are going to be willing to
supply a Linux driver; but there needs to be an easy way for them to get
a driver installed on a user's machine. They can't wait for RedHat to
spin a new CD-ROM, or for Linus to stablize the development series, or
even for Alan Cox to put out a new 2.2 kernel (and even then most users
may not be able to deal with a 2.2 kernel; they may have to wait for a
distribution to get around to including the latest stable kernel).
As Linux becomes more successful, and as we start attracting more users
which aren't kernel developers, the same old ways that we've used in the
past might, just **possibly**, not be the ones that will work the best
in the new world order. Or should we just tell the naive users that so
sorry, they can't use the banavision capture card under Linux just yet,
come back in 6 months, and in the meantime, use Windows 2000 (since the
Banavision CD-ROM came with installable Windows drivers)?
I hope not! That's downright embarassing.
- Ted
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/